Kit Seaton, Illustration

I am happy to state that the online website for my first comic is live, Otto the Odd & the Dragon King is a short story for juniors that I have been collaborating on with author George Herman since 2004. It stars an eleven-year-old prince named Otto, who is hyperactive and hates baths. His best friend and mentor is a very, very old dragon he calls Sparky. Otto’s troubles become even greater when an aging knight named Sir George comes to his country and convinces the king to sign a binding contract enabling him to slay any and all dragons in the regency, and Sparky’s at the top of the list.

The first eight pages are uploaded, I hope to have regular updates. Best laid plans and all.

Check it out!

{link}

Well, it’s been a very busy beginning to the new year so I decided to take this brief lull to catch things up. I finally graduated in December with that hard won degree in Illustration and I began teaching at Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design as an adjunct instructor in the Illustration department. I am also assisting the head of the liberal studies department with a theatre studies class. My responsibilities lie mostly in the direction of RMCAD’s first official theatrical production since Lysistrata; NO EXIT, by Jean Paul Sartre. Despite these new responsibilities I am still maintaining a part-time job in retail and attempting to launch my career as a freelance illustrator (which feels a little like the Spruce Goose on its virgin flight).
The best news of the new year was my acceptance into the Society of Illustrators Student Scholarship Competition. One of the sequential pages from “Otto the Odd”. I’m pretty excited about it.
Here’s the link:

Society of Illustrators

In other news, I finally set up the sequential art gallery on the website. There are mostly just some samples from “Otto the Odd and the Dragon King” and I should have some more things up there soon. Eventually “Eve of All Saints” and “Otto the Odd” will have their own independent websites. Should be cool.

http://www.kitseaton.com/sequential.html

-Kit

I suppose that’s a good thing.  It won’t die because I refuse to let it.  I have been working for about five years now on the graphic novel retelling of a book for my friend and author George Herman.  Not that he actually requested that I do it, actually I asked him if he would let me do it and he patiently agreed.  This slow-going progress probably isn’t too unusual given the vast amount of labor required by graphic novels however, because my learning curve and abilities continues to improve as a carry on there are officially several versions of what is merely chapter 1.  Eventually I suppose that I will finally accept chapter one for all its limitations and move the heck on.  I continuously myself that ‘okay, this is the last time, then it’s on to chapter 2′!  Only now that I am no longer timid about showing the progress to colleagues and peers I am receiving feedback that is genuinely useful and would best be applied to what I have done.  Essentially back to ze drawing board.  George is always congenial and willing to look at another manuscript and offer words of encouragement, but I’m pretty sure he might wonder if I will ever finish the darn thing.  And I may, hopefully before I am ninety.  I’m not frustrated.  If I were I would have moved on.  One of my instructors suggested that it wouldn’t be such a bad idea.  Somehow I will continue to pick up a pencil and take another crack at it.  Then come back a month later, scribble notes all over it, scrap it, and start again.  The Graphic Novel that Doesn’t Die is the touchstone of my artistic growth and obsessive hubris.   So one day I will have this finished product that will represent the opus of my work, or I shall be found decades later a dry and powdery husk crumpled over a desk.  Not exactly romantic, perhaps a little more morbidly humorous.  That seems more my style.  Anyway, should be fun.  

Here’s a work in progress from the graphic novel.

I Santi Ostinati